The call came at noon the next day. The second I heard the levity in Cathy’s voice I knew I had the job. Relief swept over me. I was so ecstatic—to have a job in hand and to know that a good majority of my troubles were on their way to being over—that it took a moment to realize just how little they were offering. I never made much money—even when I was in finance—because I never had the confidence to ask for it. But what little I had made then was still far greater than the $10.50 an hour Cathy was offering. I wasn’t even sure I could make it on that alone. But when she asked if I accepted, I bit my tongue and said yes.
“Great! When can you start?”
“Would tomorrow be too soon?”
She thought about it a moment, then said yes, tomorrow would be fine. “Let’s say nine thirty then.”
She spent two minutes filling me in on what to expect before the call ended, and when it did, I could have wept at the mountain of stress that had just been lifted; I was starting five days sooner than what I had projected in my budget, which meant I was now seventeen days away from my first paycheck. Even though it’d only include six days of work (three days this week, three days the next, shortened because of Thanksgiving), I was ecstatic; it’d be my first paycheck in well over six months. My first stroke of good luck in the Windy City.
“I have a job,” I kept repeating to myself, pacing the apartment, pumping my fist in the air. “I have a job.” And I still had about two hundred dollars left. Perhaps I’d be able to find my own place on that alone. Or maybe not, but at the very least I was well on my way to getting out of Jeff ’s.
five